When No. 15 Oklahoma faces No. 18 Oregon Saturday, it will be the programs’ third meeting in two years. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, that’s three more times than the Sooners have faced Big 12 foes Iowa State or Missouri during the same period.

The Ducks will have played only one Pac-10 team, Stanford, as often as they have the Sooners. OU and Oregon are each other’s most familiar foe.

“Having this be the third year in a row we’re playing Oklahoma, I feel like it’s a league game almost,” Oregon coach Mike Bellotti said. “I mean we’re seeing way too much of them.”

After a 29-year hiatus, OU and Oregon hooked up in 2004 at Owen Field. The Sooners rolled through the Ducks 31-7, continuing a long-standing trend of lopsided routs at Oregon’s expense. The game was the fifth between the schools, with the Sooners winning all five by a combined score of 184-17.

But their last meeting was anything but lopsided.

In the 2005 Holiday Bowl, OU linebacker Clint Ingram sealed a 17-14 victory by intercepting a Brady Leaf pass with less than two minutes to go.

It was a victory OU hoped would propel it to great things in 2006. The Ducks were ranked No. 6 heading into the postseason and were on the fringe of reaching a BCS bowl.

The Sooners saw the win as evidence they’d weathered all the problems that plagued the early part of the 2005 season.

Oregon saw things differently.

Bellotti stirred things up a bit this week. He saw last year’s meeting at the Holiday Bowl as a game the Ducks let get away.

Perhaps it’s been gnawing at him for eight months.

“Oklahoma recognizes they escaped last year,” Bellotti told USA Today.

Stoops has different memories from that mild night at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. He remembers the Sooners having a chance to take a 24-7 early in the fourth quarter, but Adrian Peterson’s fumble at the goal line changed the complexion of the game.

“That was a heckuva a game,” he said. “I think it’s fair to say we had our other opportunities … You can define it any way you want. This is a new year.”

That’s what happens when a rivalry begins to bloom. Opinions tend to differ when old topics are revisited.